After many months of developer previews and beta releases, Android 15 is now formally obtainable.
It can begin rolling out to supported Pixel gadgets within the subsequent few weeks, and within the subsequent few months, gadgets from Samsung, Honor, iQOO, Lenovo, Motorola, Nothing, OnePlus, Oppo, realme, Sharp, Sony, Tecno, vivo and Xiaomi will get it.
It presents a number of updates that customers will be capable of make the most of, reminiscent of the truth that the TalkBack display reader is now powered by Gemini, Chrome can now learn internet pages aloud, and the Earthquake Alerts System — which makes use of crowdsourced earthquake detection know-how to inform of earthquakes earlier than they begin — is rolling out to all U.S. states and 6 territories.
As with each Android replace, there are numerous modifications builders will want to concentrate on. This time, the primary updates for builders will be divided into 4 classes: typography and internationalization, digicam and media experiences, person expertise, and privateness and safety.
“Android 15 continues our mission of constructing a non-public and safe platform that helps enhance your productiveness whereas supplying you with new capabilities to provide stunning apps, superior media and digicam experiences, and an intuitive person expertise, notably on tablets and foldables,” Matthew McCullough, VP of product for Android Developer, wrote in a weblog put up.
Typography and internationalization
FontFamily cases can now be created from variable fonts with out having to specify the wght and ital axes, and the textual content renderer will mechanically modify these values to match the airing textual content.
NotoSansCJK, which is the font file for Chinese language, Japanese, and Korean, can be now a variable font, which the Android staff says creates new alternatives for inventive typography.
The Japanese Hiragana, or Hentaigana, font is now bundled by default, helpful for paintings and design, but additionally in sharing and preserving historical Japanese paperwork.
And at last, there may be improved justification for languages which use white house to section characters, like Chinese language and Japanese.
Digicam and media
For screens that help each HDR and SDR, setDesiredHdrHeadroom can be utilized to set the HDR headroom, which may forestall SDR content material from displaying as washed out.
Android 15 additionally helps clever adjustment of audio quantity and dynamic vary compression for apps with AAC audio content material and loudness metadata. This enables quantity to be adjusted primarily based on person gadgets and environment, the Android staff defined.
Different updates on this space embrace Low Mild Increase to regulate the publicity of the Preview stream in low-light situations, larger management of flash depth in SINGLE and TORCH modes, and help for digital MIDI 2.0 gadgets as in the event that they have been a USB MIDI 2.0 machine.
Person expertise
To enhance multitasking, customers can now save their split-screen app combos and in addition pin the taskbar.
Moreover, apps that focus on SDK 35 will show edge-to-edge by default. System bars can be clear or translucent, and content material is drawn behind.
Privateness and safety
Customers can now create a non-public house the place they’ll cover sure apps, requiring authentication to entry them.
Android 15 additionally provides help for utilizing passkeys to sign-on and helps autofilling saved credentials into related enter fields.
Additionally, apps can now detect if they’re being recorded, which permits apps to inform the person if that is occurring whereas they’re performing a delicate job.
Moreover, the brand new allowCrossUidActivitySwiftFromBelow attribute prevents job hijacking assaults by blocking apps from launching actions in the event that they don’t match the highest UID on the stack.
And at last, PendingIntent creators now block background exercise launches by default, which prevents apps from unintentionally creating ones that might be utilized by malicious actors
Different developer expertise updates throughout Android Studio, Jetpack Compose, and Android Jetpack libraries
The ApplicationStartInfo API gives perception into the explanation an app is beginning, time spent in launch phases, begin temperature, and extra.
The profiling class in Android Jetpack lets apps request heap profiles, heap dumps, stack samples, or system traces.
StorageStats.getAppBytesByDataType([type]) API provides insights into how an app is utilizing storage.
Different developer expertise updates embrace new PdfRenderer API capabilities, new OpenJDK APIs, new SQLite APIs, and new Canvas drawing capabilities.
